Parking plan goes into effect at Cupertino Civic Center

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(photo Jacqueline Ramseyer/Bay Area News Group/April 22, 2014Cupertino City Council has officially approved a parking plan at Cupertino Civic Center that will make portions of Rodrigues, Torre, and Pacific Avenues exclusively for city and library employee parking. This will help free up nearly three dozen parking spaces in the main Civic Center lot.

A new parking arrangement has been made at the Cupertino Civic Center, home of city hall and the library.

The civic center, 10300 Torre Ave., now has portions of the south side of Rodrigues and Torre avenues and the northside of Pacifica Avenue reserved for employee parking, freeing up a potential 33 parking spaces in the main civic center lot for residents visiting the wildly popular Cupertino Library.

The new arrangement did not involve construction of new parking spaces; rather, the civic center main lot’s existing 221 parking spaces are now designated either as four-hour public parking or as permit parking for city and library employees and their personal vehicles, according to the city.

The plan has 153 stalls designated for public parking, 40 stalls for city employees, 24 stalls for library employees and four stalls reserved for patrons of the city’s permit center.

The 33 permitted parking stalls on sided streets will be used by employees of the city and library who typically parked in the civic center lot. Permit parking is available only to Cupertino city employees and Santa Clara County employees working at the civic center.

The four-hour parking limit will be in effect seven days a week from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Permit parking for library employees will be in effect seven days a week also from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Permit parking for city employees will be in effect Monday through Thursday from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. The one-hour limit for the city’s permit center will be Monday through Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Library patrons who find themselves at the library for more than four hours during the 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. enforcement period can move their car to another stall and gain an additional four hours of parking time, according to the city of Cupertino.

Temporary parking placards will be available to visitors attending civic center events lasting longer than four hours.

The interim parking plan was approved by the Cupertino City Council on May 6 and was fully implemented after June 6. It was during the May 6 public hearing and during a previous public hearing in April that the city shared survey results and strategies for dealing with parking shortages at the civic center.

The new parking arrangement is a short-term solution. The city is working with a consultant on the development of a master plan for the civic center. A major goal of the plan is to find a permanent solution to the parking shortage.

The plan could recommend the construction of a parking garage on the site. However, the soonest a garage could be built would be late 2016 or early 2017, according to city staff.

Parking has been a continual problem at the civic center due in part to its small lot and popular library.

The council and city staff spent about an hour April 1 discussing possible solutions that came out of a mid-March city-initiated survey of city and Cupertino Library employees.

In early April, the city conducted online surveys for library patrons and users of adjacent Library Field. Patrons of the library completed the survey at a kiosk located near the check-out counter in the library.

It was in this survey that city staff found that the majority of library patrons visit the library for fewer than four hours.

Residents with questions about the new civic center parking plan can contact the public works department at 408.777.3354.